Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic and a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence—at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, and above all about addiction—to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.
It’s a thrill to hear the characters develop on the page ... One of the better portrayals of addiction I’ve encountered in literature, up there with books by Jean Rhys and Leslie Jamison, and one that almost convinces you of the exhilaration in using ... There is a stubbornly idealistic streak across Despentes’s fiction, and in Dear Dickhead it’s unmissable.
A more nuanced and redemptive novel than fans might expect from this poète maudit of the marginalized ... This is the most optimistic novel of Despentes’ career. It also may be the most subversive.
In many ways, a sentimental book, forbearing toward its characters and essentially optimistic about the human capacity to change for the better. In clumsier hands, it could have devolved into an apology for men behaving badly ... . In a world that offers little in the way of consequences for abusers—indeed, where abusers can be rewarded for their temerity—we might decide, as Zoé does, to get up, get out, and build another world with anyone willing to try. A life worth living is its own form of revenge, and so is a self you can live it with.
